Alert! It’s a done deal: the country’s most important book business, Exclusive Books, is no longer part of the company that publishes this website, Times Media.

A consortium that includes former MD Benjamin Trisk now owns it lock, stock and barrel. What’s past has certainly been prelude in this instance: Trisk is now the company’s CEO.

He’s kicked his tenure off with the brim and brio of a proper book impresario, reminding his staff of the value that the Exclusive Books brand holds and urging them to help him reinvigorate it.

I met Trisk last week and learned of some of his plans, which amount to back-to-bookselling-basics coupled with ambitious dreams for reshaping “lifestyle” retail.

After years as Times Media’s ugly stepchild – and particularly during the past year, when it suffered from a rigamarole of well-meaning but ultimately feckless management moves – the business is certainly enjoying Trisk’s brisk new broom. Off the record, Exclusive Books store managers have told me that they’re delighted with the tone and direction he’s taken during his first few days.

Said tone is readily apparent in Trisk’s first letter to his new staff, which has been given to Books LIVE to publish. “I welcome back this business under our joint control,” he writes, punctuating his exuberant but grounded prose.

Frankly, it’s the type of letter that those who have stuck with Exclusive Books during the last few years of upheaval have been thirsting for. Read Trisk’s letter in full: